An MIT biotechnology researcher managed to master a remarkable computer game Torment using actual gut bacteria. Lauren Ramlan didn’t convert the game to a digital simulation of bacteria, but pixelated the actual bacteria to render a 30-year-old FPS. as reported Rock paper shotgun.
Specifically, Ramlan created a screen inside the cell wall made entirely of E. coli bacteria. A 32×48 1-bit display might not win any resolution awards, but who cares, right? this Torment works on bacteria. The researcher gave the bacteria fluorescent proteins to make them light up like digital pixels.
There are a few caveats here. First of all, bacteria don’t actually run the game because we haven’t solved the “inject biological matter with digital code” problem yet. Instead, the bacteria combine to act as a tiny monitor displaying gameplay for your favorite shooter.
There’s also the subject of frame rate, which is always an important metric when reviewing FPS games. Frankly, the frame rate is terrible, probably because bacteria was never designed to render 3D video games. It takes the bacteria 70 minutes to light up one frame of the game, and another eight hours to return to the starting state. That’s about nine hours per frame, meaning it would take about 600 years to play the game from start to finish. It’s worse than that Cyberpunk 2077 at the start.
So, while it may not offer the smoothest gaming experience, it’s still a pretty cool idea. Also, it further proves this theory Torment it can work on almost anything. We’ve seen the game working on pregnancy tests, rat brain neurons and even inside other titles, e.g continuation Doom II and Minecraft. Torment it is the great equalizer. May it continue to amaze us for the next 30 years.
